September

What does September mean to you? If you are a teacher it is probably ‘sigh – back to school’ and if you are a pupil it will be ‘even bigger sigh – back to school ‘and if you are a parent, ‘yippee – back to school’!

At OPRO we know exactly what September means and we love it! It’s the time of year when we turn into mouthguard central. Our usually calm lab becomes a veritable hive of activity operating 24/7, the workforce quadruples and our skilled technicians produce over 2,500 mouthguards a day! An OPRO employee’s first September is a bit like a rite of passage!!

Amongst the 2,500 daily mouthguards we produce are ones for England Rugby, GB Hockey, GB Taekwondo, England Boxing, English Lacrosse, New Zealand Rugby, Australia Rugby, 11 of the 12 Aviva Premiership Clubs and numerous professional sportsmen and women. Good to know that the technicians who are making mouthguards for these illustrious men and women, some of them Olympic Gold Medal winners, are also making mouthguards for you.

Our 'making of a mouthguard' video gives a great insight into how a bespoke mouthguard is made but seeing the process at first hand is really quite amazing.

Hard to believe, possibly, but there are over 20 individual steps that go into the manufacture of a custom-fit mouthguard. Over the years we have refined the process to ensure that our lab has become the slick enterprise it is today. Much of the equipment used to make the mouthguards has been created uniquely for us to fulfill the requirement we have to make the best-fitting, most comfortable mouthguards in the world. Our mouthguards begin life in the form of what we call ‘blanks’. These are either squares (for plain colours) or circles (for our stripe combinations) of EVA – plastic stuff capable of absorbing high impact. These blanks are ‘thermoformed’ or, to you and me, ‘moulded using heat’ over individual plaster models of the wearer’s teeth and gums. The OPRO logo is placed by hand onto the front of the mouthguard as are any designs such as the Urban or Emoji and the wearer’s name, name of their school or club and any mark showing whether the mouthguard has had antimicrobial additive included or is the ultra-thin D3O model. A steady hand and good eye are required!

A clear layer of EVA is laminated over the coloured layer trapping the logo, name and design. A 1mm clear layer creates a mid-impact protection level mouthguard and a 3mm layer a hi-impact protection level mouthguard A pro-impact protection level is a hybrid of mid and hi-impact: it provides high protection over the teeth but is thinner in the area behind the teeth – the palate – and it is this unique combination that makes it our most comfortable and highest protection mouthguard. . I did warn you that there are a lot of processes involved in the making of a mouthguard and for an item that is so relatively small, it is highly technical and the men and women who produce them, highly skilled.

Before being placed in their cases and despatched to their owners, the mouthguards are buffed and polished and given a final quality inspection. We are proud of the products we produce and want nothing less than perfection to go through our doors. The importance of wearing a mouthguard during ball, stick and combat sports cannot be underestimated. We have seen some dreadful images of the trauma caused to teeth and gums when a mouthguard has not been worn and an accident sustained and equally photos where the injuries would have been horrific had the wearer not been using an OPRO mouthguard. There have been instances when the mouthguard itself has been damaged by impact but thanks to their well-fitting OPRO, the wearer’s teeth are happily intact. For us, that is mission accomplished. Sport can never be risk-free but our aim is to give anyone who wears one of our mouthguards the best possible protection available to their teeth and gums. As the owner and founder of OPRO quite rightly points out, teeth, unlike bones, do not heal. A sobering thought.

So we anticipate September with relish and no trace of a sigh. The atmosphere is buzzy and good-natured, but a bit like those involved with Christmas in the retail industry, once one season has finished, we start preparing for the next one and the fun and excitement builds all over again as we begin preparations for the next September….